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If it wasn’t for the stained paper and pen-and-ink cursive, you’d swear the century-old letter from Vulcan, Alberta was written today.

Violet Collier complains about the weather, the government and arrogant American neighbours — “thinking they rule the world” — while admiring the handsome Prince of Wales, a “nice open faced boy.”

And of course, being Canadian, she talks a little hockey too.

“It’s just a really great letter — for us, it’s the era that it was written in,” said Jonathan Allan, economic development officer for the Vulcan Business Development Society,

“The lady who wrote it was a new immigrant, who’d been here a year or two — and they were going through the exact same things we go through now, worrying about the weather and the price of feed.”

Allan is the middle man in a return-to-sender story that took 94 years to complete — and thanks to a curious Australian, the letter penned to a “Miss Scholz” on Nov. 15, 1919 is now back in the hands of Collier’s family in Alberta.

Tim Lacey of Balaklava, Australia is the hero of this tale, after discovering the well-preserved letter inside an old trunk he purchased years ago.

With the Internet at hand and his curiosity driving him, Lacey finally made contact with Allan at the Town of Vulcan — and from there, the letter was returned home.

“I’ve always been interested in history, especially the working man — the nuts and bolts and little things of life I think are fantastic,” said Lacey, of his determination to reunite the letter with its family.

Written on letterhead from the Vulcan Supply Co., the correspondence details life on the post-Great War prairie, and 29-year-old Violet tells her friend about the union unrest that followed the war — her feelings clearly laced with anti-American sentiment.

“It does not seem as though things will ever be the same again, since this war, everything here is upside down with strikes, the United States is in a dreadful state,” the letter reads.

“Serves them right though they are always saying ‘How they won the war,’ running down other ‘Nations,’ thinking they rule the world, you should feel thankful you have not got them as neighbours.”

Then as now, weather and politics was a big deal.

“We have had a very dry year (the 3rd) again, it’s making things bad, and an early winter has set in since Oct. 15 we have had 2 ft of snow on the ground with zero weather cattle are dying for want of feed, hay is an awful price, and can scarcely be got,” she writes.

“Gov’t is talking of helping out more than has been.”

She talks about her husband’s brothers and their fate during the war — “one was killed and one sent to Siberia for a year” — and then changes to cheerier news, gushing over a recent visit by Edward, Prince of Wales.

“We have had the “Prince of Wales” out here, we drove 95 miles by auto to see him, had a dandy view, he is such a nice open faced boy everybody is in love with him.”

It wasn’t the only long drive Violet and her husband took that year — “We had another long ride by auto this summer 104 miles to see a brother of Geoffs, our light’s gave out coming home, a pitch dark night, but we got home alright.”

Finally, she mentions Canada’s favourite pastime.

“Games on the ice is the order of the day out here now, “Curling”, “Hockey” and Skating.”

Violet died in 1962, but her family still lives in Vulcan — and her grandson David Collier says the letter, to be donated to the Vulcan Museum, shows a side of his grandma he never knew.

“She was such a reserved lady, the letter seems so out of character from how I remember her — very chatty and very newsy, obviously with a pen-pal of consequence who we never knew about,” said David.

If Violet’s chipper penmanship was a surprise, David said the subject of grandma’s letter is way too familiar in a small prairie town.

“Things don’t change on the prairies — people around here are still worried about drought and animals and the price of hay.”